It was Audie Cornish's first day as host of CNN This Morning, replacing Kasie Hunt.
Cornish's demeanor is temperate, just as she was taught as a National Public Radio host. No Don Lemon-Jim Sciutto ego-driven excesses. In opening the show, Cornish modestly didn't even make mention of her debut.
Even so, for those hoping for more political balance from CNN, it was an inauspicious beginning when considering the panel Cornish chose to assemble for her first show.
The panel was comprised of Jonah Goldberg, co-founder of the generally Trump-critical site The Dispatch, and two New York Times journalists who double as CNNers: Astead Herndon and Lourdes "Lulu" Garcia-Navarro.
Cornish's predecessor, Hunt, was no conservative. Even so, her panels almost always included a traditional Republican in the person of either Brad Todd or Matt Gorman. Cornish invited neither today--not to mention Republican home run hitter Scott Jennings!
Saying that "there are a lot of bets going around," Garcia-Navarro promoted a betting pool on how long Marco Rubio "will last" as Secretary of State. Her notion being that, as the child of refugees from Castro's Cuba [as is Garcia-Navarro herself], having to promote Trump's foreign policy views is antithetical to Rubio's hawkish policies on Russia and Putin. Earth to Lulu: It's been a month.
Speaking of Castro's Cuba, don't forget our 2016 blog on LGN when she was at NPR: Kiss from Fidel Castro's Brother Felt Like 'Blessing of the Holy Trinity'
Goldberg and Herndon said that they were not in the pool. Neither am I, but I wouldn't bet on Rubio leaving Foggy Bottom any time soon. To date, Rubio has received widely positive reviews on his work.
Moreover, as someone who has been around Trump for at least a decade, going back to the beginning of the GOP primary in 2015, Rubio sought and accepted his appointment with eyes wide open. He was surely well aware of Trump's views on Putin and Ukraine, and how they might have differed from his own.
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
3/3/25
6:03 am ETAUDIE CORNISH: Joining me now to talk about all of this, Jonah Goldberg, CNN political commentator and co-founder of The Dispatch, Estead Herndon, CNN political analyst and national politics reporter at the New York Times, and Lulu Garcia, CNN contributor and New York Times journalist, also host of the podcast The Interview.
. . .
Let me bring in Lulu for a second. I know you watch Marco Rubio carefully in terms of how he talks about this publicly.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: My Florida senator.
CORNISH: Yeah, what do you make of this?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I was pretty shocked. This is the son of Cuban political exiles. And the idea that he is having to be so deferential to Putin, so pushing a foreign policy that is upending everything that the United States has stood for is pretty shocking.
And I think that what we're going to be seeing going forward, there's been a lot of bets by people like me, like how long Rubio's going to last in this cabinet, because --
CORNISH: Astead, are you in that pool?
ASTEAD HERNDON: I mean, I get why the bets are going, because it does seem like a team of rivals.
CORNISH: -- Wait, Jonah, are you in that pool?
JONAH GOLDBERG: I am not.
CORNISH: [Turning to Herndon] Are you in that pool?
HERNDON: No.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Maybe not. I mean, the bets are going, but, like, of everybody, he seemed to be the one that wasn't going to last that long, right?
Like, because, you know, he stood for something very different in terms of his foreign policy. He was very hawkish. He was very anti-Russia. He's spoken very, you know, forcefully against Vladimir Putin. And so to have to be pushing this now seems very, very, kind of a complete about-face.
And so, you know, that's the question.
